The latest beta of Ecto has been doing weird things on me recently, so I’m trying MarsEdit again to see what its like. Nice Mac OS X interface. I’ll probably give the other Mac OS X blogging clients a whirl as well.
UPDATE: Back to Ecto. MarsEdit is nice and a good blog client, but I just like Ecto better and I’m used to it.
Some of us from Northern Ireland, who were at WWDC, are thinking of setting up a local Cocoa developers group to met and discuss development and technologies related to the Mac OS X and iPhone/iPod touch platform. It is envisioned that there will be periodic meetings, a mailing list, a web page, possibly guest speakers, etc. All this is still to be determined. The following 5 domains have been registered for the group to use:
nicocoadev (.org, .net, .com, .co.uk)
nicod.org
If you would be interested in participating in the group then email me using the contact link in the sidebar on the right of this page.
Feel free to pass this information on to anyone else who you think might be interested.
I fly out to SF on Friday for WWDC next week. Schedule is done. Mostly Macs in IT with a smattering of Cocoa and iPhone sessions to break them up. Plus some extracurricular activities. See iCal screen grab below.
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I bought a MacBook Air a few months ago to use as a travel computer so that I could travel light. I had planned to use it just when away for work. A project I was working on required that I set-up a test Mac OS X Server machine. The only machine I had that was capable was my 17-inch MacBook Pro. As a result of this I’ve been using the Air as my only Macintosh portable machine. I’ve had to add a 4-port USB hub and an external USB drive for my iTunes folder. But apart from that the machine has met my needs perfectly. The screen was a bit small for my tastes but I’ve got used to it. I use Spaces in Leopard to increase the real estate I have. The lightness of the device is the biggest plus point. My shoulder will thank me if I think I keep the Air as my portable Mac and use the MacBook Pro as a mobile music workstation for Logic Pro, EZDrummer and GarageBand. I’ll also use it to record midi drum information from my Roland drum kit. Iv’e had to put that in a different room from my other stuff.
I’ve been using Delicious Library since it was released. The new version has been in development for a long time. It won an Apple Design Award at WWDC in 2007. I didn’t think this was right. Applications should be available to win an award.
I really liked Delicious Library 1 and the interface that it presented. I liked the flow of the eye from left to right in the window. Indeed this was used as an example of good Mac OS X application design. It was however a bit slow.
Various snippets of information that have come out about Delicious Library 2 have outlined how it would require Mac OS X 10.5 and it would use lots of the technologies that Leopard delivers. Well it’s out now. What’s it like? In my opinion its a step backward from the previous version. The new one is certainly snappier but they have changed the Interface and moved the info section from the right of the window to below the shelf view. The whole concept of the flow of the eye from left to right has been broken. On my MacBook Air with its small screen the new version is largely unusable. I’m really, really disappointed. You can’t even double click on an item in the library and get a separate window to view detail information. Plus there are bugs, such as: it shows links to Amazon as Amazon (null) in the Item menu and the Context menus. I expect this should be Amazon (United Kingdom) in my case. I store my iTunes Library when using my MacBook Air on an external disk with an Alias to the iTunes folder in my Music folder. It doesn’t seem to like this and the iTunes import didn’t work. I’ve been waiting for this for ages to replace the slow v1. I’m afraid the new version isn’t for me.
Instead I’ve bought the Bruji bundle of their 4 ‘pedia apps to store my book, DVD, Game and Music info. Those apps imported my info from Delicious Library with no problems. They are fast on the MacBook Air. They give me a better view of the data on the Air display than Delicious Library 2 did and the CDpedia app imports my iTunes music info. One downside is that there are 4 apps instead of one. I’ve created a small Applescript app to start all 4 at once and have stuck that in the Dock with a nice icon showing a storage box. So a single click gives me access to all the apps.
The bundle cost me 3 times what the Delicious Library upgrade would have. I think it was worth it. If Delicious Library 2 wins another Apple Design Award this year it’ll be a travesty.
As expected, the Apple World Wide Developers Conference has been confirmed for June. My ticket has been bought and activated. Flight booking request sent to admin in work. Hotel booked from 6th to 15th June. Looking forward to having a chat with several people involved with 3rd party tools we are using in work. Plus the iPhone Development track will be very interesting.
Apple are holding a press event at 18:00 UK time today to outline the roadmap for the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) and also to reveal some exciting new enterprise features. The iPhone SDK should be interesting. Hopefully we’ll be able to write iPhone apps using Apple Xcode and Objective-C. I’ve a few ideas for apps I’d like on my iPhone. I hope the enterprise stuff is a Blackberry client.
It seems that iPhone uptake in the USA is already outstripping the combined Windows Mobile based phone sales. So the iPhone is already a significant player and the development stuff we get today will be a significant announcement.
I got a MacBook Air. I had said I wouldn’t get one as it didn’t offer anything that my MacBook Pro didn’t have. However, several times over the last year when traipsing through an airport with the 17 inch MacBook Pro, in its Brenthaven case, pulling the shoulders out off me, I’ve thought about getting a lighter Mac. I’ve tried roller cases but didn’t like them. So I’ve been resigned to carrying the weight.
Last week I was away from home in Manchester. After the journey there, and the next day, carrying the MacBook Pro I had pains in my right shoulder. On Tuesday night I was in the Arndale Centre Apple Store and they had the MacBook Air’s on the table near the entrance. I’d seen them at MacWorld and knew they were thin and light. They felt really light when examining them in the store. Temptingly light. I dithered for a while, but in the end I bought one. I got the cheapest model with the 80GB hard drive, 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB Ram. I’m going to use it as my travel computer when away from home. It’s going to be perfect for that. It is very light. I’ll be able to load it up with my Open University course books in PDF format and read those on it when away. That’ll also reduce the weight of the stuff I need to carry when travelling. The screen is very nice and reading PDFs on it will be good. I had been thinking about getting an iRex Iliad for reading PDFs. I’ll use the MacBook Air instead. As a bonus it’s colour which is better for the books in question, plus my subscription copies of Scientific American Digital are far better viewed on a colour screen.
I bought a small leather Tumi case for it in the duty free shop in Manchester airport on the way home.
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I got back from San Francisco on Monday afternoon after Macworld last week. The weather was a bit of a shock! I saw lots of flooded fields and rivers on the approach into Heathrow. The weather in San Francisco was very good. It was sunny for the whole time myself and 2 others were there. Apparently this is unusual for January. The sun shines on the Mac users! When I got back to Belfast it was blowing a gale and there was horizontal rain. Cold. These things are relative though. I came out of the hotel in San Francisco one day last week and saw a girl on her way to work with wooly gloves and scarf on. For me it was a warm morning, for the natives it was cold. Transplant one of them to Belfast last Monday and they’d probably have died on the spot!
On the subject of travel, well flying, I have to say that British Airways are excellent. I’ve always had excellent service from them and they are my carrier of choice.
Macworld itself felt a bit flat to me. There were some good points. The Microsoft Day at the Office session to launch Office 2008 for Macintosh was good. Attendees had to pay $199 to attend this session. It was worth it. There was some very useful info from people who knew the software. They also gave everyone a copy of the Special Media Edition of the suite. A $499 value. Nice. Other highlights for me from a product point of view were: TheSkyX and Seeker from Software Bisque, Casper from Jamf Software, and Filemaker Pro 9. The new virtualisation solutions from Parallels and VMware that allow Mac OS X Server to be run in a virtual machine looked good as well.
There were several very good talks, as well as several indifferent ones. On the good side there was the talk by Merlin Mann. Very entertaining and very useful as well. Leo Laporte and Alex Lindsey gave a good talk on podcasting and video podcasting. No slides in this one, just a conversation with the audience. Andy Ihnatko gave a good talk about how to use iTunes and iPods better. The Expo show floor was a typical trade show. I had a good talk and made some contacts with Jamf Software about Casper that’ll be useful for work.
I wouldn’t rush back to Macworld. I’d rather spend the money on attending Apple WWDC. This is a better conference for my needs. Entries in the Moscone Centre schedule for June list a corporate event from 8th to 13th June. That’ll probably be WWDC 2008. I’ll hopefully be at that.
This entry was composed using MacJournal 5 which has just been released and I’m testing to see if I can adopt it as my journal and blogging software. If you are reading this then it works!
UPDATE: MacJournal isn’t going to replace Ecto for blog editing.
The Omni Group have announced pricing and a release date for OmniFocus. I’ve been using the beta versions for a while. It’s a very nice application for sorting out the things you need to get done. It can help you implement the Getting Things Done methodology. Well worth checking out if you need an application to help sort your life out and keep track of all the tasks you need to do in work and personal life. The also have a nice movie, that is the first of a series to be posted, to show how to use the application.
The iPod touch lacks the Notes application that is on the iPhone. As a work around for this (until Apple gets the message and adds it via a software update!) you can create a Contact called Notes and use the Note field of the contact to record snippets, to-dos, etc. on the go. The Contacts app on the iPod touch only shows fields with data in them. So Set the first name filed to Notes and put text in the Notes field and these are the only two fields that will be visible for that entry. When the iPod touch is synced with MacOS X the Notes entry and its associated text will be available in AddressBook. And vice versa, changed in AddressBook will sync to the touch.
Just got electronic access to the first few books for a new Open University course that starts on 6th October. It’s a 3rd level computing course called Natural and Artificial Intelligence. It covers traditional AI research and how ideas from biological systems and evolution are shaping AI ideas. Finished the introductory book already. Good stuff. Looking forward to the rest of the course. Also start the recently introduced course on evolution next February.
The exam for the AI course is sometime around 14th June 2008. I’m hoping that means it’ll be in the week after Saturday 14th and that it doesn’t clash with WWDC 2008. It looks from the Moscone Center web page for June 2008 that there are non Apple events on in the Moscone West on the weeks beginning 16th and 23rd June. Looks like the event listed as Corporate Event from Sunday 8th June to Friday 13th June in Moscone West will be next years WWDC. I’ve got enough British Airways air miles for a free flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, and enough Marriott Rewards points for almost a week in a hotel. So should be able to do WWDC next year pretty cheaply.
So I read on TUAW that some iPod touch units were starting to hit the Apple stores in the USA. So I hightailed it round to the San Francisco store to see if I could get one. I did. A 16GB one. There are unboxing photos in the web gallery linked on the right. In addition to being an iPod, it’s also a WiFi enabled Internet device. If you are reading this post then it seems that I can post to this site using the built in Safari web browser. More details and thoughts on the device to follow.
Update: Post spell checked and categories set from my MacBook Pro a few hours after posting from the iPod touch.
I’m off to San Francisco again in a few weeks. Maybe I should move there? Work is sending me to VMworld at the Moscone Centre. Same place as the last two Apple WWDC conferences. Should be interesting. They are expecting 10,000 attendees for the 3 day conference. There is also a partner day that I’ll be attending. VMware VI3 is really, really cool and very, very useful (as are the other VMware products). Looking forward to getting down and dirty in the deep technical sessions. I’ll also need to go to the sessions that are related to how educational organisations are using virtualisation technologies. And the green computing session will be a must as this is a hot topic in new school builds. All newly funded Building Schools for the Future projects in the future have to be carbon neutral.
Of course there are the VMware for Mac sessions as well. And drinks with the VMware engineers… 🙂
Scivener may be a nice app. But it’s developer should dry his eyes. Jeez. The ADC Select membership includes pre-release versions of MacOS X. No promise is made about when versions will be made available. Attendance at WWDC is a separate issue. Many of the sessions at the conference discuss features that are in the latest Leopard beta so it makes sense for attendees to have access there and then. Apple have already said that they will post a Leopard beta for Select ADC subscribers in the near future.
Well, that’s WWDC 2007 done and dusted. It was a week of evolution rather than revolution. All the stuff outside of the Keynote is NDA’d of course, but the whole week was a refinement of what was presented at WWDC 2006. For me the most interesting day was the Friday. Amongst others I attended a brilliant session given by Sal Soghoian on scripting MacOS X, and the improvements to scripting technologies in Leopard. Sal is a very engaging presenter. If you ever have the chance to attend one of his talks then definitely take it. The MacOS X and Aqua feed back session on Friday was also very good. It was basically 1.5 hours of Q&A to 4 senior Apple execs (including Scott Forstall and John Geleynse) about the user experience in Leopard. Some very interesting discussions about the direction of the new interface 🙂 The presentation on the Leopard user interface methodology given by John Geleynse earlier in the week was excellent as well.
There were lots of other interesting and really informative sessions during the week. I learned heaps of stuff that’ll be useful, both in my job as an ICT consultant in the Education world (Podcast Producer! Oh my god!) and, as a hobbyist MacOS X programmer (Xcode 3 Tools). See you all at WWDC 2008 🙂
I like Heathrow. For an airport anyway. For all the ones I’ve been in Heathrow pisses me off the least 🙂 Sitting there at present. An hour to go to the flight to San Francisco for WWDC 2007. Much happiness. I didn’t get bumped up to Business Class at check-in. Maybe at the gate. Coming back last year I was upgraded and only found out at the gate. Even if I don’t I’ve got a good seat in Premium Economy. Lots of leg room!
From an article about the mobile phone market on The Register, in relation the the forthcoming iPhone:
Not everyone agrees the iPhone will be as successful as Jobs hopes, but Apple does seem to make the perfect bogeyman for the mobile phone industry. What could be more scary than an organisation capable of working in total secrecy, with a track record of creating highly desirable products, headed by a man who’s beaten cancer and an SEC investigation and comes equipped with a Reality Distortion Field that would make Darth Vader jealous.
Nice one!
Made a few minor changes to the WWDC schedule I posted previously. This is probably close to the final session list I’ll attend. Unless there are some late additions after the keynote for super secret stuff. Not long to go now 🙂
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